Are You Thorny?

I am certain that all of us, at sometime or another, feel the pressures of life so weighty on us we walk around in a fog and we wonder "how am I going to get through this?" We wait for "normal" to arrive and "normal" never comes! I've been studying about the "cares of this life" the past few days. What I learned, I want to share with you.

First of all, "cares" defined is anxiety or disruption to personality or mind.

Reading in Mark 4:18-20 "Others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it (the Word) proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

In these verses I see that I have been thorny ground. The cares of this world have come in and choked God's word in my life. I looked up choke in the Greek dictionary and it means to overpower the Word. Unfruitful means to make unproductive. Well, so I ask, how am I supposed to deal with the cares of this world. I mean, I have to deal with everything that faces me. I can't run away in attempt to avoid the issues that are present. I can't ignore them and pretend they don't exist! So, what do I do...? Oh, yes, remembering another scripture about cares. I Peter 5:7 "Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares about you." I was reading Rick Renner's bible study the other morning and he said that word "Cast" in the Greek means to 'hurl', 'throw', 'fling with great force.' Well, that's surely one way of getting rid of my cares. Better yet to fling with great force all my cares that weigh me down upon God. He is far more capable of handling them and bring the end result to an appealing closure.

So, I sit in my quiet corner and in my imagination I vision everything that is weighing me down in one big pot. I mentally and verbally take each care and talk to God about them, one by one imagining dropping them into His bucket to handle for me. I do not see that I should forsake doing what needs to be done regarding these issues, but I leave the ANXIETY of it all, the weight of the responsibilities, the pressures and then end results in God's hands for him to deal with and now, I have successfully "cast my cares upon the Lord, for He cares for me." I remember now, that I turned it all over onto to Him to deal with and so when I feel the anxiety rising up within me again. I make myself remember that I gave that to God to deal with and leave the Cares there with Him.

But, I don't want to be "Thorny". I want to be "Good Soil". What do I need to do to change this issue in my life. Well, I just did step one! I recognized I was allowing the cares of this world to overpower the Word of God in my life making God's Word unproductive for me. Explain . . . well, we blame God for what is going on. It's not right to blame God. Life happens. There's carnal flesh that we have to deal with and there's a devil who has come to steal, kill and destroy. God did not do any of that. He shows us the way to go to live successfully. When we don't follow His instructions on how to handle things we are letting "Life" take precendence over  God's Word and, well, when you don't put something to work or action it's pretty hard for it to produce something, right? We've effectively allowed the hassles of live to cause us anxiety and disruption to our personality and our mind. By doing that we're thorny and allowing the cares of this world to impact our life, not the Word of God.

So, now we change our way of dealing with things. Cares - you no longer rule me. I cast my Cares onto God - He cares for me. He will work powerfully in my situation. I hear the Word of God, I agree with God's Word and I obey God's Word. Now God's Word can produce God's plan for me in my life. I am good soil! Don't allow the cares of this life to rule you! Don't be thorny. Don't let the cares be more impacting in your life than  God's Word. Hear God's Word. Let His Word be what you put your attention to and agree with it and obey it and watch and see it produce in your life!

Have a Wonderful Weekend Care-Free!